Letters to The Editor: Farmers markets add to local color; Longmeadow residents work to get there; and more

File photo by Michael S. Gordon | The RepublicanGourds that are dried, dyed and waxed adorn a table at the River Bend Farm of Hadley table, at a farmers market in Forest Park in Springfield.

We are fortunate here in Western Massachusetts to have land that is perfect for farming, and we are fortunate that many people choose to do that very hard work.

They provide us with food that is outstanding. In this day and age when our food comes from all over the world, and when we can purchase items that we previously could only have during the months that they grew locally, we become complacent.

You want strawberries in March? They’re available. But, what is the flavor like compared to the ones that you can buy that are grown here in June? Not as good, that’s for sure.

Anyone who patronizes a farmers’ market goes out of their way to do so. I hope that those reading this letter will do so also.

Keep our farmers farming and help our local economy at the same time. Farmers’ markets have opened for the season. Find one near you and make it a habit to go there.

You will love it.

– BELLE RITA NOVAK, Springfield

It’s folly to put question on ballot

What is wrong with this picture?

Chicopee Mayor Michael Bissonnette mayor has asked the city council to add a ballot question in November asking voters if they favor officials appointed by the mayor over elected officials. (“Fiscal manager position eyed,” The Republican, May 17).

In one report on this latest attempt at becoming a strong mayor in spite of the city charter wisely having created a check and balance system, the mayor is quoted as saying, “The reality is people have a right to a professionally and competently run city hall, and you don’t get that through the political process, where the most liked or the person with the most lawn signs wins.”

Perhaps he forgot he, too, is an elected official.

Even if the mayor does collect 4,000-plus signatures to put a non-binding question on the ballot, hopefully the City Council and the state Legislature will allow the present voting process to continue. I also would hope the council and all other elected officials find the preceding comments attributed to the mayor insulting.

– JAMES RASCHILLA, Chicopee

Hero-making risky in Hollywood town

“You an fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time,” (Abraham Lincoln, (1809-1865).

Here again like so many before him as well as some of his contemporaries, former California Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger has been immortalized and placed on a pedestal. It should be remembered that, in this instance, we are dealing with Hollywood, and not the real world.

We need to stop the futile task of hero-manufacturing. The real world is one of frailties. What’s probably needed is better recognition and understanding of the dynamics that evolve in and around the likes of places such as “Tinsel Town.”

No, not everyone who lives in Longmeadow is a doctor or a lawyer. Indeed many people who can be counted as members of the middle class own homes and reside in the town. I know, as I have family living in Longmeadow.

And yes, there are minority families who own homes and live there. How did many of them get there? They worked hard and achieved, that’s how! Also, many of these middle class residents work and pay taxes to support Medicare, Medicaid, subsidized rents and food stamps.

Please think before making such out- of-touch generalities. Sure, we all wish we were highly paid doctors and lawyers, but it’s just not true. So I say to everyone, there is a choice out there to how and where you want to live.

– DOUGLAS MCNEIL, Agawam

Bernard column filled with insight

I just finished reading Barbara Bernard’s column, in today’s Daily Republican, regarding then Principal of Holyoke High School Henry J. Fitzpatrick’s speech to the graduating class of 1957. While I enjoyed the entire column, which was filled with wisdom and insight, the last paragraph hit me like a bucket of ice cold water - if those two sentences of 35 words did not sum up and point out exactly what has been lost and gone wrong with our dear old U.S.A., I don’t know what could.